Electronic Arts’ college football game is now the biggest selling sports video game in US history when it comes to dollar sales.
That’s according to the November report from Circana, which also reports EA Sports College Football 25 is among the top 50 best-selling games of all time by the same metric. It is also the biggest selling game of the year so far in the US.
Price promotions drove the title back into the Top Ten of the monthly charts, beaten only by Madden NFL 25 and Call of Duty: Black Ops 6.
The latter was cited as a key factor behind the year-on-year decline in spending last month, down 7% to $5.8 billion. November 2024 was up against the comparison with the launch month of Modern Warfare 3, while Black Ops 6 launched in October. This year’s Call of Duty is the second biggest-selling title of 2024 so far.
Instead, the biggest new release was Mario & Luigi: Brothership at No.7 (although this does not include digital sales, as Nintendo does not share this data). The only other new releases in the Top 20 were the HD-2D remake of Dragon Quest 3 at No.12 and EA’s My Sims: Cozy Bundle at No.19.
Spending on video games content – including software, subscriptions and so on – dropped 9% year-on-year to $4.5 billion, with console content being the biggest source of decline, down 29% compared to November 2023.
Hardware spending was flat at $927 million, with a 15% growth for PlayStation 5 helping to counter the 29% drop on Xbox and 3% on Switch.
The new PS5 Pro console accounted for 19% of all units sold for Sony. Dollar sales for the upgraded console were over 50% higher than the launch sales of PS4 Pro, which launched in November 2016, but unit sales were 12% lower.
Overall, 2.4 million consoles were sold in November 2024, up 4% from the same month last year. Year-to-date, hardware sales are tracking behind at 9.4 million units compared to 11.8 million.
Here are the top 20 selling games from November 3 to 30, 2024 data courtesy of Circana:
| Rank | Last month rank | Title |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 |
| 2 | 8 | Madden NFL 25 |
| 3 | 10 | EA Sports FC 25 |
| 4 | 11 | EA Sports College Football 25 |
| 5 | 2 | Dragon Ball: Sparking! Zero |
| 6 | 7 | Super Mario Party Jamboree* |
| 7 | NEW | Mario & Luigi: Brothership |
| 8 | 9 | Sonic X Shadow Generations |
| 9 | 17 | NBA 2K25* |
| 10 | 6 | Dragon Age: The Veilguard |
| 11 | 13 | Hogwarts Legacy |
| 12 | NEW | Dragon Quest 3 |
| 13 | 15 | Astro Bot |
| 14 | RE-ENTRY | Marvel’s Spider-Man 2 |
| 15 | 3 | Silent Hill (2024) |
| 16 | 4 | Undisputed |
| 17 | 5 | Metaphor: ReFantazio |
| 18 | 16 | Minecraft^^ |
| 19 | NEW | My Sims: Cozy Bundle |
| 20 | RE-ENTRY | Marvel vs Capcom Fighting Collection: Arcade Classics |
*Digital sales not included, ^^Digital sales on Nintendo platforms not included.
